


Break These Bones (’Til They’re Better)

by sleeplessink



Category: Legacies (TV 2018)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Minor Character Death, Not Canon Compliant, i give jed just a little bit of a backstory, literally nobody is going to find this, that's all !!!, who's out there tracking jed's tag specifically let's be friends lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:33:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24668452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleeplessink/pseuds/sleeplessink
Summary: The first time he pins someone down in the schoolyard, whatever is seething inside of him quiets down. The stillness is the first thing Jed notices. The second is the rush of power that immediately follows.ORLet’s make the only explicitly Asian-American guy on Legacies slightly more three-dimensional, shall we?
Kudos: 10





	Break These Bones (’Til They’re Better)

In third grade, Jed learns that if you don't stand up for yourself, you get thrown to the ground.

He's the new kid who stutters and chops down his syllables when he reads out loud, and children can be so cruel about things that they do not understand. (Nine years later, he will still remember the exact way his chest stung at whispered laughter and pointed fingers during recess.)

He's an eight-year-old who doesn't know what to do with this sense of inadequacy in his brain, this feeling of otherness in his chest. They swirl inside of him and come out as anger, burst like the hinges of the door his father slams on the days he argues with his mother. But Jed is small and they are a lot, so he ends up with scraped knees, bruises, and nothing that helps whatever is boiling inside of him.

The day after he comes home with a black eye, his father signs him up for Jiujitsu. During the car ride to his first class, he goes on an entire tirade about how "real men ought to know how to fight back". Jed doesn't say a word in response. (He's young, but was even younger when he was taught that he was not allowed to talk back.) He only crosses his small arms over his chest, disgruntled. He wouldn't even know how to put into words that this feels like his dad agrees that something is wrong with him. That this feels an awful lot like he's trying to fix him.

Somehow, he ends up loving it anyway.

He can't seem to get words on a paper to go to his brain without the letters jumbling on the way, but he learns that his limbs manage to move exactly the way he wants them to. On those blue mats, a child learns not to feel so foreign in his skin, learns to appreciate how his body is certain in a way his reading never seems to be.

The first time he pins someone down in the schoolyard, whatever is seething inside of him quiets down. The stillness is the first thing Jed notices. The second is the rush of power that immediately follows.

It only takes a week for kids to go from snickering at him to sitting next to him at lunch. He has no reason to believe this is anything other than friendship. So Jed lowers his shoulders, sits up straight, and for the first time in weeks, smiles.

His father had been right in the end, he thinks. If you showed power, people flocked to you. If you showed weakness, people stepped on you. It was a simple law, really. Somewhere in the pit of his stomach, a hunger begins to grow. One that is only satiated by the feeling of having the upper hand, by victory.

His Jiujitsu teacher chastises him on his temper regularly, tells him the martial art is about technique and timing, not brute strength or speed. That it’s not just a fight or a sport, but a way of life. Jed doesn’t really get it, and thinks his teacher is a little bit old-school, but he nods anyway.

He starts collecting detentions the way he collects stripes on his belt. See, Jed likes his hands, likes the feeling of his fingers curling into fists, likes how they soothe the rage coursing through him, how they surround him with people.

He likes his hands until they are the reason his entire life crashes to the ground.

☽ ☽ ☽

Jed is fifteen when he triggers his werewolf curse.

It should have been a normal Tuesday afternoon, walking home from football practice and playing video games until his parents tell him to do his homework.

He isn't supposed to spot his sister and her boyfriend Ian in an alley, isn’t supposed to see him hit her across the face, isn't supposed to hear him tell her it’s her fault he’s hurting her again.

A few weeks earlier, Leah had waved the questions and bruises away with mentions of rougher roller derby practices, and Jed had believed her.

He feels so _stupid_.

Jed hates feeling stupid.

It leaves a background track of discomfort, of frustration, of anger. And suddenly his eyes can’t see anything but his sister's bruises, her split lip, the way her skin whitens at the pressure of Ian's hand pressing around her wrist.

His entire skin lights up in fury.

He doesn’t even say anything as he rips him away from his sister.

“What the fuck?” Ian spits out in surprise.

The guy is heavier and older, which explains the amount of punches that land on Jed’s face. But Jed has spent the last seven years on mats wrestling guys that were stronger than him, using leverage to pin them down. He’s grown half a foot during the summer and gained enough muscle that nobody would ever call him scrawny anymore, but your limbs don’t forget movements they have practiced hundreds of times.

And Jed is so _angry._

He can’t hear whatever it is that his sister is screaming as he throws Ian’s body on the ground, can’t hear the chilling sound the head makes against the concrete. Jed wants to make him pay, for him to get every ounce of what he deserves. So his hands curl into fists and throw punch after punch, trying to set things right, begging for a reason for his rage to quiet down.He only lets his sister push him off her boyfriend’s body when he knows he won’t get up any time soon or hurt her ever again. Jed still can’t hear anything then, can only feel the heaving in his chest, the shaking of his hands, the ringing stillness in his head.

“He’s not breathing.”

Leah’s eyes are frenzied, her face horrified, and it manages to snap Jed back to reality.

“W— what?”

“He’s not, he’s not _breathing._ ”

It takes him a few seconds of him staring at his sister beginning to perform CPR before it registers. His brain picks up where it left off and Jed runs to his sister’s side.

"Jed, what did you do?" she whispers in horror.

The words will haunt him in a constant loop in the future, but for now he lets his mind discard them to focus on the situation at hand.

“I’ll do it,” he swallows. “I’ll do the CPR. Call 911.”

☽ ☽ ☽

The full moon is a week later.

Every night that leads up to it, Jed wakes up soaked in sweat. For a few moments all he can see is flashing red and blue lights, a body bag being zipped up, the blood staining his knuckles. But even as he tells himself that he’s in his room, that he can’t do anything to change things now, the image of his sister’s face as she hovers over Ian’s body will not leave his brain.

He doesn’t think anything is wrong when he wakes up in the middle of the night again, because he has done the same for the last six nights.

Of course, the sudden breaking of his bones clues him in that something is wrong soon enough. He has kicked his covers down on the floor writhing around his bed in pain when his door is kicked open. But he’s too busy screaming in agony to register the sudden flux of people in his room and the chains around his body.

When he is done transforming into his wolf form, the man he’ll later know as Dr. Saltzman is standing next to his clawed out bed.

His father spouts aggressive questions punctuated with countless swear words. (He becomes loud when he encounters something he doesn’t like or understand.)

His mother is terrifyingly composed. (She becomes cold when faced with a problem, and her expression has never looked as glacial as it does that night.)

His sister is standing behind their parents, horrified.

(Even in his wolf form, Jed notices the familiarity of the expression.)

☽ ☽ ☽

When he wakes up the next morning, Jed is told to pack his bags to leave that very same day.

His father looks at him with something that feels an awful lot like disgust, and his mother with chilled indifference. Jed swallows protests about school and football and his life. (It has been years now, since he’s learned he is not allowed to talk back.) He buries the indignation somewhere deep in his chest as he shoves his clothes inside his suitcase. Jed feels like he’s eight again, feeling like his parents agree that something is wrong with him, that there is something in him to fix.

☽ ☽ ☽

“So I’m a werewolf,” Jed states with his face impassive from the passenger seat once they are on the road.

“Yes.”

He has at least figured out that much.

“But I didn’t get bitten by any wolf recently.”

The headmaster smiles, but Jed’s stare is terribly focused.

“Lycanthropy is actually a genetic condition.”

“And in normal English, that means...”

“There's a 'werewolf gene'. It isn’t caused by bite or scratch like the movies and shows have led us to believe.”

A beat passes.

“So my parents—“

“At least one of them has the werewolf gene, yes. But it’s only triggered when one takes a human life, meaning the gene can be passed on for generations undetected.”

Jed uncrosses his arms and clutches the arm rest. God, does this mean he’s the first killer in his family in _generations_?

‘ _Being a killer isn't a_ common _thing, of course you’re the first in generations,’_ he scoffs at his own thoughts, clenching his jaw.

“Speaking of, would you care to tell me about what happened with you?”

Jed shoots the headmaster a glare.

Yeah, he cares, actually. The fact that he has taken someone’s life (and _wanted_ to) is haunting him, and he doesn’t exactly feel like like flaunting it to a stranger who’s taking him to God knows where.

“Your mother told me a little bit about it, but I would like to hear it from you.”

Great. He already knows. Nausea begins creeping up on him again, and he takes several deep breaths before he finally speaks.

“He was my sister’s boyfriend. He beat her, and I didn’t—“ he swallows, his jaw setting. “— and I didn’t know. I was coming home from football practice when I saw him hit her.”

Jed fixes his eyes on the horizon as he tries to control his breathing. He can feel the anger edging closer, threatening to overwhelm him again.

“I was angry. We fought. I pinned him down and punched him, and his head hit the ground. I didn’t know he was dead until my sister told me he wasn’t breathing.” He thinks he can smell blood again, and rolls down his window for fresh air. “CPR didn’t work on him. I tried.”

Noticing his hands are shaking, he puts them into fists in an attempt to still them. Alaric remains silent, and Jed hates how desperate he is for him to say something. (Fuck him and his kind tone and his sympathetic interest.)

“So what, is this school like werewolf prison? You keep us locked up so we can’t kill anyone else?”

“Is that where you think you’re going?” Alaric shoots him a look of concern, one that silently asks ‘ _And you were going to go there willingly?’_.

But Jed isn’t looking at him, so he just shrugs instead.

“It’d make sense, right?”

Only silence answers him, and when Jed turns to look, the older man is frowning. He lets his gaze fall to the ground, carefully pulling his hands into fists.

“I… took someone’s _life,_ Dr. Saltzman,” he adds, his voice low.

God, he’s never said it out loud before. The words seem to echo in the car; _I took someone’s life I took someone’s life I took someone’s life—_ Jed clears his throat to get himself out of his daze. 

“I should be going to court, or jail, or juvie. —And I’m literally an animal now. So clearly I’m unsafe, and can’t be trusted," he shrugs, ignoring the tightening around his throat, because this is just the way things are now. The sooner he accepts it and adapts to it, the easier everything will be.

“Did your parents not tell you where you were going?”

“They told to me to pack my bags. That I was going to a boarding school for kids like… _me_.” The last word tastes bitter on his tongue as he remembers his parents’ expression as they had told him. Disgusted, contempt, ice cold. He swallows, shrugs once more, and lets his eyes find the trees flying pass through the window. “I filled in the blanks.”

"The place I'm bringing you to isn't supposed to be a punishment, Jed. I founded this school to be a safe space for people like you."

The boy squares his jaw at the term, the familiar sense of otherness tensing up his entire body.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he murmurs through gritted teeth.

"It's a place for supernatural kids to learn about their abilities, not to be afraid of them. Do you understand?" 

He doesn’t, not really. But Jed can’t spot a drop of animosity in the headmaster's tone since the beginning of the conversation, no matter how closely he listens for it. So he shrugs, unclenches the muscles in his shoulders, and lets out a noncommittal noise.

"We're almost there. I'll tell you more when we arrive. Maybe you can stay there for a week, get a feel of the place, and then decide if you want to stay."

There is no doubt that Jed won’t have a choice in the matter. The school could be a demolished prison building, and his parents probably wouldn't let him come back.

"Sure, whatever."

The last few minutes are spent in silence, where Alaric sneaks a single worried glance the boy's way.

The man thinks back to the conversation he had with Jed's parents, to the concerns he brought back with him in the car. The glint of pride that shone in his father's eyes as he spoke of the fighting he got into at school, the comments that slipped through his mother's pursed lips implying that Jed was not smart enough for boarding school.

_"I hope you can find a home here,"_ Alaric thinks as he firmly grasps onto the driving wheel.

_"I hope this can be somewhere you feel safe."_

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this over a year ago — as you might have noticed with the way it isn’t consistent with what we’ve been told in s2 (speaking of which, WHY WAS JED IN SALVATORE AT LIKE 12-13 YEARS OLD — who did he kill and is he Okay) also i realize now that. there Should be a legal follow-up after there being a literal death, but also compelling humans to bring a kid into his school sounds exactly like a self-defined “moral” thing al*ric would do ajdkfl no shade just Facts 
> 
> anyway, my brain really saw an asian-american guy on my screen and went: I’M GONNA GIVE THIS BOY AN ENTIRE BACKSTORY (i originally had notes for an entire nuanced negative character arc and then i didn’t write any of it lmao. it be like that sometimes) so i’m just posting this intro kind of thing as a standalone before it becomes stale in my notes app because i don’t think i’ll be writing any more, who knows what this is, i sure don’t 
> 
> thank u for reading if u did !! will be at curiouscat.me/sleeplessink if u ever want to discuss 😌 x


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